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THE 



Declaration of Independence 



By Herbert Friedenwald. 



Reprinted from 

THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY 

FOR JULY, 1 901. 



Burlington, Vermont, 
I 9 o I . 



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Copyright by 

FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON, 

1901. 



P. 

AulV»or. 

5_Ag'01 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

HERBERT FRIEDENWALD, Philadelphia. 

The Declaration of Independence marks the climax of the 
Revolutionary movement in America. It announced to the 
world that Great Britain and her colonies, after a journey in com- 
pany along the same road for a hundred and fifty years, had come 
to the parting of the vi^ays. It is a brief but eloquent and compre- 
hensive summary of the reasons that made the separation inevit- 
able. Within those few terse and masterly lines are contained 
the history of the great controversy that peacefully assumed 
definite shape, in 1763, and came to an end only after bitter war. 
By no mere chance was Jefferson called on to write the docu- 
ment that has been termed "the best known paper that ever came 
from the pen of an individual." Many persons throughout the 
colonies had produced pamphlets innumerable upon the rights of 
the colonies and the wrongs they had suffered. But none had so 
wrought as Jefferson. His "Summary View," written in 1774 
and designed to serve as articles of instructions to the Virginia 
delegates to the Continental Congress, showed him to have a 
scholarly knowledge of the history of the colonies, a philosophic 
insight into the essentials of the controversy, and withal a facil- 
ity of expression that were possessed by none of his contempo- 
raries. The sentiment of Congress, therefore, irresistibly turned 
to him as the fittest person to draw up a declaration of the char- 
acter desired. The event proved the wisdom of the choice. 

(0 



1 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

For while the Declaration included nothing that was not familiar 
to every frequenter of the taverns, to every reader of the news- 
papers and pamphlets, Jefferson yet couched this memorable 
paper in such powerful terms that even wavering minds could not 
but be fired with something of enthusiasm by its perusal. 

Though this remarkable summary of grievances needed no 
elucidation to men of that generation, it is almost meaningless to 
us. In but few instances do the histories covering the period 
lend any aid. An explanation, therefore, of the Declaration of 
Independence as understood by the men of the Revolution may 
prove of interest, especially as we are again hearing constant 
reference to the " undying principles " of that document. 

Passing over the philosophy of the opening paragraph with the 
remark that it breathes the spirit of Locke throughout, with naught 
of French casuistry in it, we come immediately to the counts in 
the indictment against King and Parliament. T*hey show a 
total of twenty-six. For seventeen of these the King alone is 
held accountable, while for the remainder he is made to share 
the responsibility with Parliament. 

In the first two charges, Jefferson leaps at once into the thick 
of the controversy. He has included in them the whole great 
question of royal prerogative, as against colonial freedom from 
control, that agitated the English in America for all of a century. 

Excepting only Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland, all 
the colonies had fully experienced what it meant to enact laws 
" wholesome and necessary for the public good " only to have 
them repeatedly rejected by the King in Council. Every man 
had felt the strong arm of the home government interfering, not 
only in public, but in his private affairs as well. To such an 
extreme had this been carried, that after 1773 even a divorce 
could not be granted in any of the colonies, for the penalty was 
instant dismissal to the governor who lent his assent to such a 
law. That same year witnessed at least twenty important colo- 
nial laws rejected by the King upon various pretexts. What 
Jefferson had in mind, however, was the repeated disallowance 
of laws passed by the colonies to promote their welfare, but 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 3 

which came into conflict with the theories of government enter- 
tained by the home authorities. Such were the laws of Virginia 
and other Southern colonies designed to prohibit the slave-trade 
and the introduction of convicts, and those of nearly all the 
colonies for issuing bills of credit and naturalizing aliens. And 
Massachusetts, as is well known, had her great grievances over 
laws relating to questions of compensating, in her own way, the 
sufferers from the Stamp Act riots, as well as over questions of 
taxation and the appropriation of money for salaries of govern- 
ment officials. 

Attempts to restrict the importation of slaves were made at an 
early date. Every law of this nature was disallowed by the 
home government. Thus fared the acts framed in South Caro- 
lina in 1760, in New Jersey in 1763, and in Virginia in 1772. 

Similarly, the endeavors to prevent the entrance of convicts, 
regarded, if possible, with less favor even than slaves, met with 
no greater success. Franklin spoke strongly against this in 
1768, and John Dickinson wrote in the same year, "The 
emptying their Jails upon us and making the Colonies a Recepta- 
cle for the Rogues and Villians : an Insult and Indignity not to 
be thought of, much less borne without Indignation and Resent- 
ment." 

Also, bills of credit were then an absolute necessity in order 
that the colonists might be enabled to carry on trade by means 
other than those of mere barter. But the policy of King 
and Parliament was against their allowance. First came the 
breaking up of the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania land bank 
schemes. Then the act of Parliament, of 1 764, prohibiting abso- 
lutely the making of bills of credit legal tender, served to emphasize 
the fact that all control by the home government was not exer- 
cised with an eye to furthering the best interests of the colonies, 
but rather to help the English traders and manufacturers in 
increasmg their fortunes. Thus were laws of New Jersey 
(1758 and 1769), of Pennsylvania (1759), and of New York 
(1769 and 1770) of this nature disallowed by the King in 
spite of urgent petitions in their favor. 



4 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

When Massachusetts compensated the sufferers from the 
Stamp Act riots, pardoning the offenders at the same, time, the 
law was promptly disallowed. Not only this, but to forestall 
just what happened, the King by Order in Council, May 13, 
1767, required the governor to have a law passed compensating 
the sufferers, " unmixed with any other matter whatsoever," 
should payment of the sums appropriated have been made before 
the law could cross the ocean and be placed before the King. A 
few years later, when the controversy thickened, the Governor 
of Massachusetts and the Assembly of that colony were continu- 
ally at loggerheads. The disallowance by the former of the bill 
passed in 177 1, taxing the new Customs Commissioners, served 
not only to increase the existing feeling of irritation at having 
such a body of foreign and uncontrolled officers in their midst, 
but also tended to interfere seriously with the necessary legis- 
lation of the colony. The disallowance of naturalization laws 
need not detain us here, for we shall have occasion to speak of 
them below. 

Passing, then, to the second charge, we find it but a refine- 
ment, or rather an elaboration, of the preceding. The first inti- 
mation that a closer control over colonial legislation was intended, 
came when Parliament addressed the King, in 1740, requesting 
that governors of the colonies be instructed to assent to no law 
that failed to contain a clause suspending its action until trans- 
mitted to England for consideration. Then followed the royal 
instruction of 1752 calling for a revision of the laws in force in 
all the colonies and ordering, at the same time, their transmis- 
sion to England, and the insertion in each of a clause " sus- 
pending and deferring the execution thereof until the royal will 
and pleasure may be known thereon." A case in point arose in 
New York, in 1759, when Governor DeLancey was instructed 
to assent to no law empowering justices of the peace to try minor 
cases, unless such act contained the suspending clause. The 
most serious of all the rules enforcing this policy, however, was 
that aimed at the suppression of lotteries, then so great a factor 
in the economic and social life of the colonies. Down to 1769, 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 5 

they flourished unrestricted, but in that year the royal governors 
were prohibited from assenting to any law of this kind that lacked 
the suspending clause, — a practical veto upon all attempts at raising 
funds by such means. Special instructions (1771) prohibited 
Governor Martin of Virginia from signing any law of this char- 
acter, on the reasonable ground that the practice " doth tend to 
disengage those who become adventurers therein from that spirit 
of industry and attention to their proper callings and occupations 
on which the public welfare so greatly depends." 

As respects the latter portion of this second charge, — the 
neglect of laws suspended in their action until the royal assent 
be obtained, — we have a typical instance in four laws passed in 
Virginia, in 1770, and transmitted to England at once. They 
were not even considered by the Lords Commissioners for Trade 
and Plantations until nearly three years after their enactment. 
Three were then confirmed, but a fourth was set aside for final 
action at a later date, until more information respecting it might 
be obtained from the Governor of Virginia. Jefferson denounced 
this policy at some length and with great vehemence in his 
"■Summary View," for he was fully aware how heavily its practice 
bore upon his own colony. 

With the third charge, however, we reach the first grievance in 
the list that meant everything to the men of that time, but to 
which our historians have paid no attention. It has to do with 
the erection of additional counties out of newly settled districts and 
of their representation in the colonial assemblies. The colonists 
claimed this power as a right. But the King regarded it as a 
privilege to be procured only through the royal grace and favor. 
A clash was inevitable. It came in New Hampshire, New 
York, New Jersey, and Virginia, the colonies most actively 
engaged in peopling their western lands. New York tried to 
give representation to two newly erected counties, Cumberland 
(1766) and Albany (1768), but was prevented in each case. 
Not only that, but in the latter instance the King graciously con- 
sented to the division of the county and the election of two new 
members from it to the Assembly ; only on condition, however, 



6 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

that in the law establishing the new county no mention should 
be made of representation. The year 1767 witnessed the issu- 
ance of a royal instruction embodying this law in its most 
stringent form, designed to control absolutely the whole matter 
of representation in the assemblies, and the qualifications of 
electors and elected as well. Virginia felt that this bore with 
particular severity upon her, and her leading men knew well that 
Governor Martin had, in 1771, received explicit orders to carry 
out this instruction to the letter. Jefferson regarded it as a 
great grievance and an infringement on the rights of freemen. 
According to his view, the people living on the western 
borders and having no local courts, nor any local government, 
found the administration of justice almost an impossibility. 
" Does his Majesty seriously wish," wrote he, " and publish it 
to the world, that his subjects should give up the glorious right 
of representation, with all the benefits derived from that, and 
submit themselves the absolute slaves of his sovereign will ? " 

Leaving that question undecided, we come to the three charges 
respecting the removal of assemblies, their dissolution, and the 
failure to convoke them after long periods. These need not 
detain us more than a moment. The details of the removal 
of the Massachusetts Assembly to Cambridge and Salem, and 
that of South Carolina to Beaufort, are many and varied, and are 
to be found in all histories of the times. Moreover, we are all 
quite familiar with the dissolution of the Virginia Assembly, in 
1765, after the passage of Patrick Henry's famous resolutions ; 
with that of Massachusetts, in 1768, for refusing to review the 
action on the Circular Letter ; and that of South Carolina and 
Georgia for daring to withstand Lord Hillsborough's order to treat 
that letter " with the contempt it deserves." In a like manner, the 
passage of the ringing Virginia Resolves, in 1769, led to another 
dissolution. And when a Continental Congress was in question, in 
1 774, all but three of the colonies had to elect delegates by means of 
provincial conventions or committees of correspondence, because 
their assemblies had been dissolved by the royal governors. The 
last of these three charges relates undoubtedly to the calling of the 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 7 

Boston town meeting of September, 1768, to urge upon the 
governor the necessity for convening the Assembly, which had 
been dissolved because of its action on the Circular Letter, while 
troops, but recently ordered to Boston to quell the disturbances 
there, " exposed the citizens to all the dangers of invasion from 
without and convulsion within." And in New Hampshire and 
South Carolina and Virginia, in the autumn of 1775, affairs of 
Government had come to such a pass that an appeal to Con- 
gress was made for advice. The answer came to establish 
governments that will " best promote the happiness of the 
people," and " most efFectually secure peace and good order." 

We turn now from the familiar details of dissolved assemblies 
to the little known affairs relating to land grants and naturalization. 
The proclamation of the autumn of 1763, in which the King 
expressed his intention to erect new colonies out of lands that 
the colonists claimed by right of charter, meant the serious cur- 
tailment of these claims and the obstruction of the migration 
westward. It marked the initiation of a new policy. It restricted 
the limits of the colonies claiming rights to the South Seas to 
" the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the 
Atlantic Ocean." Beyond the " heads or sources " was a 
reserved domain out of which the governors were prohibited 
from making any grants whatever. Worse still, those who 
had settled in these regions were peremptorily ordered to vacate, 
on the pretext that the lands were reserved for the Indians. But 
the movement had already set towards the west, and no such 
restrictions could check it. Land companies, in which Franklin 
and men of his stamp were interested, made petition for the right 
to found colonies, but met only with refusal. Yet the westward 
migration could not be stayed, although the attempt was made 
by means of the Order in Council of 1773 prohibiting the 
royal governors from issuing any patents until further instruc- 
tions were issued. These followed a year later, and were 
even more grievous, in that they raised the "conditions of 
new appropriations of lands." The royal lands were to 
be sold at specified times to the highest bidders at the upset 



8 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

price of sixpence the acre, and with the reservation of an annual 
quit rent of one half penny the acre to the King. No lands were 
to be disposed of except in this way. Jefferson had this in mind 
when he wrote the Declaration and when he said, in 1774, 
"• His Majesty has lately taken on him to advance the terms of 
purchase, and of holding to the double of what they were, by 
which means the acquisition of lands being rendered difficult, the 
population of our country is likely to be checked." Only the 
advance of the Revolution prevented the carrying out of these 
provisions, which were everywhere regarded as harsh and unjust. 

Closely allied to the question of granting lands was that of the 
naturalization of aliens. This was very generally practiced by 
the colonies, not so much with a view to conferring political 
rights as for the purpose of attracting desirable immigrants to 
open up their undeveloped territory. Where the right to transmit 
his property to posterity was accorded him, there would the immi- 
grant settle. Such acts of naturalization met with no comment 
from the homegovernment till the proclamaiion of 1763 was issued. 
From that time on, however, few of these acts passed the ordeal 
of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations without recom- 
mendation for disallowance. Finally, in November, 1773, came 
the royal instruction prohibiting absolutely the naturalization of 
any aliens and the passage of any acts to that end. It was a 
heavy blow to the prosperity of the larger land-holding colonies : 
Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the settle- 
ment of which bade fair now to be seriously interfered with. 

That part of the same charge that mentions the refusal to assent 
to laws encouragmg immigration had reference to an act passed in 
North Carolina in 1771. It exempted persons coming imme- 
diately from Europe from all forms of taxation for four years. 
It was disallowed, however, by the King, in February, 1772, on 
the ground that it related especially to certain Scotch immigrants, 
since its provisions applied only to persons coming immediately 
from Europe, and thus might have an evil effect upon the 
" landed Interests and Manufacturers of Great Britain and Ire- 
land." 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 9 

Going a step farther, we search our histories in vain for an 
explanation of the complaint that the administration of justice 
has been obstructed by the refusal of assent to laws for establish- 
ing judiciary powers. Our first thought, on endeavoring to 
account for this, is likely to be of the long-standing controver- 
sies in New York and Massachusetts over the payment 
of the salaries of the judiciary and the conditions of their 
tenure of office. The question at issue, in both instances, 
hinged upon granting salaries by colonial appropriation or 
permitting payment to be made from the crown funds. By a 
policy, adopted at an early date (1761), Great Britain persistently 
refused to permit the judges to hold office during good behavior, 
as in England, and insisted, instead, that they must hold only 
during the King's pleasure. Forced to yield with no good will 
to this extension of the royal prerogative, the colonists resisted 
to the utmost the additional encroachment, that made it possible 
to enforce obnoxious laws and decrees by the whole power of a 
judiciary dependent not only for its tenure, but for its stipends as 
well, upon the absolute good will of the crown. The tenure 
established, to fix salaries was but a repressive step in advance, 
although the question did not develop till 1767. Then that ill- 
advised Townshend Act, known as the "glass, lead, and paint " 
act, passed Parliament, and became the law of the realm. Its 
preamble stated boldly its design to make " a more cer- 
tain and adequate Provision for defraying the Charge of the 
Administration of Justice and the Support of Civil Government, 
in such Provinces where it shall be found necessary." A para- 
graph in the bill, explaining how this was to be carried out, 
showed that it was no idle declaration of intention merely. To 
the inhabitants of these colonies, already goaded to the point of 
rebellion because of excessive control of their internal affairs, 
this meant an intolerable interference with their just rights, and 
was not to be borne. 

Furthermore, the extension of the jurisdiction of the Admiralty 
courts, in 1764 and 1768, with the great enlargement of their 
powers, foreshadowed the possible extinction of trial by jury in 



lo THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

civil as well as maritime causes. No case was ever tried in an 
Admiralty court before a jury, and the judges of these courts were 
royal appointees receiving their salaries, supposedly, from fines 
and the proceeds of the sale of condemned vessels ; but, as this 
source failed to bring in any revenue, they were paid directly out 
of the royal exchequer. The greatest of the controversies over 
judicial salaries, however, is the famous one begun in Massachu- 
setts when, on that evil day in February, 1773, Governor Hutch- 
inson announced to the Assembly of the province that the King 
had made provision for the justices of the Superior Court, and 
that consequently no appropriation was necessary for their main- 
tenance. As its details are well known, we need not stop to 
recount them. 

By this time the careful reader of the Declaration will have 
discerned that instead of making clear the charge respecting the 
obstruction of judiciary powers, in reality the next succeeding 
grievance has been explained. We must, therefore, take up the 
thread where it was dropped and elucidate one of the obscurest 
of the historical references. The man whose mind evolved the 
Declaration knew that in such a state paper the most crying 
wrongs of each colony must in some measure be enumerated. 
That while it would be best, for the most part, to confine the 
charges to those restrictive measures that concerned all alike, the 
most crying local grievances of each colony must not be disre- 
garded. The colony whose cause is here advocated is North 
Carolina. And unquestionably, political considerations occa- 
sioned this recognition of the fact that she had been the earliest 
to declare in favor of independence. Outside of local histories 
we seek in vain for the explanation of this important episode 
in her history, even though it attained a prominence so great as 
to find a place in the Declaration. 

The controversy held in mind by Jefferson was an old one, 
and began when, in January, 1768, Governor Tryon signed a 
law, passed at a previous session of the Assembly of North 
Carolina, that provided, among other things, for establishing 
Superior Courts of justice. The law was to be in force for 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. ii 

five years only, and from then to the end of the next regular ses- 
sion of the Assembly. For three years, all went well because the 
Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations paid little atten- 
tion in the interval, to colonial laws. Fault was then found with 
this " Superior Court Act " because of a clause that made the 
property of persons who had never been in the colony liable to 
attachment on the suit of the creditor. This was in contraven- 
tion of the laws of England. While the Lords Commissioners 
considered it a serious departure from legal form, they agreed, 
nevertheless, that if the Assembly would amend the act in this par- 
ticular, they would not recommend its disallowance. No action 
in response to this hint was taken by the North Carolina Assem- 
bly, and after waiting a due season, — about a year, — the King 
was persuaded to issue a royal instruction prohibiting his gover- 
nor from giving his assent to any law containing the attachment 
clause, unless it included a provision suspending its operation 
until the royal pleasure was made known. This came in Feb- 
ruary, 1772, and was well timed, for the law was to expire by 
limitation the next year, and, consequently, if proper provision 
were not made by the Assembly, no courts would exist in the 
province. In February, 1773, therefore, when the Assembly 
passed a new Court Act, making provision for Superior and 
Inferior courts retaining the objectionable attachment clause, the 
contest was on in bitter earnest. The first law enacted con- 
tained no suspending clause. This the Governor, Martin, 
vetoed. Then the Assembly yielded so far as to add the sus- 
pending clause, but retained the attachment provision. This 
was, of course, disallowed by the King, and meanwhile, as there 
were no courts in the province, the governor was instructed to 
establish them on his own responsibility. This he did, but the 
Assembly refused to recognize his authority, and made no appro- 
priation for the salaries of the judges. Persisting in their 
determination to have the kind of bill they wanted and to con- 
trol their own affairs, they passed the one previously disallowed, 
when they convened again in March, 1774. They were then 
prorogued for their obstinacy, and practically did not sit again 



12 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

while North Carolina was under British rule. Thus, as a result of the 
controversy, not only was the Assembly dissolved, because it failed 
to do as it was bid, but from 1773 until North Carolina assumed 
State government, in 1776, there were no courts in the province. 
From the controversy over judges to that over commissioners 
for the enforcement of customs laws is but a step. Their 
appointment is made the basis of the grievance charging that a 
multitude of new officers had been sent to America " to harass 
the people and eat out their substance." For, with the decision 
of Townshend to pass an act of taxation, was combined the 
determination to enforce it at all hazards. As there was no gov- 
ernmental machinery in America to support this policy, a new 
engine of oppression was instituted by the first of the Townshend 
Acts. Its provisions were exceedingly modest in that they simply 
authorized the King to appoint Commissioners of Customs to 
reside in America, v/ith power and jurisdiction similar to the 
British Commissioners. They in turn were empowered to appoint 
an indefinite number of deputies, and it was this multiplication 
of officers that aroused the hostility of the colonists. Their 
salaries, moreover, were to be paid out of the receipts from the 
customs, and constituted the most serious aggression, of this nature, 
to which the colonists took exception. Yet one that caused but little 
less irritation was the policy initiated by Grenville, in 1764, 
when he determined upon rigorously enforcing the existmg trade 
laws with a view to putting an end to smuggling. In accordance 
with this intention, he placed Admiral Colville, naval commander- 
in-chief on the coasts of North America, virtually at the head of 
the revenue service. And each captain of a vessel was instructed 
to take the customs house oath, and aid in the seizure of those 
engaged in the illicit trade, which had been connived at for years. 
Further, as offences against the revenue acts were to be tried in 
courts of Admiralty or vice-Admiralty, their increase with new 
officers became necessary. The first of the new courts with 
previously unheard of jurisdiction was opened at Halifax, in 1764, 
while the act of 1768 made provision for their extension 
throughout the other colonies. 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 13 

The next charge has to do with the maintenance of troops in 
the colonies without the consent of the legislatures. With this 
we may couple the later accusation of quartering troops upon the 
people. As the facts respecting each are so well known, we 
need not stop to consider them. The same may be said of the 
grievance in which complaint is made of rendering the military 
independent of and superior to the civil power. This has refer-, 
ence, of course, to the appointment of General Gage as Gover- T i" 
nor of Massachusetts in the spring of 1774. The powers con- 
ferred on him were so extensive, that, upon the abrogation of the 
charter by the Massachusetts Act, he exercised an absolute 
authority that could not fail to excite armed resistance. 

Thus we have come to the end of the first division of grievances. 
The master mind of JefFerson perceived that he must adopt a 
manner of accusation that was sufficiently emphatic to inspire 
enthusiasm, and yet not weary with the long recital of 
"abuses and usurpations," — all of the same character and 
recounted in the same style. Therefore, after the enthusiasm of 
the reader has been kindled by the nervous, terse sentences, there 
is a sudden break, and the form of indictment undergoes a brief 
change. The attack is resumed, after only a moment's pause, 
not, however, against the King alone. For Parliament now 
shares jointly with him the burden of ofFence. 

Of the first of the new order of grievances we have already 
sufficiently spoken. The next, however, which complains that 
soldiers escaped through mock trials the consequences of any 
murders they might commit, needs some comment, for it is not 
free from ambiguity. Yet it must refer to the trial of Captain 
Preston and his men for the deaths resulting from what is known 
as the " Boston Massacre." This trial was, however, full and 
free, and the acquittal of all but two of the accused by the Bos- 
ton jury is a high tribute to their dispassionate fairness. Despite 
it all, the memory of the dead men, who were looked upon as 
martyrs, was always cherished, and for long years afterwards the 
day was observed by the dehvery of orations in commemoration 
of the occasion. The event aroused feelings of horror through- 



14 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

out the colonies, for it marked the first occasion on which blood 
had been shed in the contest with England, that was so rapidly 
drifting into war. Yet Jefferson had the cause of the Revolu- 
tion too dearly at heart to permit him so to distort the appear- 
ance of any of the acts of aggression as to give them a face that 
was not theirs. What, therefore, must have been uppermost in 
his mind when penning this clause was the recent act for the 
" impartial administration of Justice," (May, 1774,) which was 
designed to provide for just such contingencies as had arisen in 
the case of the Boston Massacre, — the trial of persons accused 
of murder while in the discharge of their official duties. In 
accordance with its provisions, all persons in the service of his 
Majesty, military as well as civil, accused of murder com- 
mitted while executing the laws of the realm in the colonies, 
might in order to ensure a fair trial obtain a change of venue to 
some other colony, or to Great Britain. Provision was made for the 
transportation of witnesses as well, and most grievous of all, the 
person thus accused might be admitted to bail, it mattered not 
how flagrant the crime charged against him. As the likelihood 
of a British official, military or civil, being brought to trial in 
England for a crime committed in executing the law in America 
was extremely remote, this was considered as an unwarrantable 
invasion of colonial rights. 

Having thus far dealt in the main with the political side of the 
grievances, Jefferson, in order that nothing of importance should 
be omitted, now turns to those oppressions that bore most heav- 
ily upon the economic life of the people. And if there is a weak 
point in the whole Declaration, it is the failure to dwell to any 
extent upon the narrow British economic policy towards the col- 
onies, which meant simply using them for the benefit of the 
manufacturers and traders at home. This is all the more sur- 
prising since in the beginning the opposition to the enforce- 
ment of trade laws and the right to taxation was based as 
largely upon economic as upon political grounds. All attention 
was soon centred, however, upon that side of the controversy 
that gave the greater opportunity for appeals to the passions of the 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 15 

multitude, — the rights claimed as theirs by reason of being free- 
born English subjects. To cut off the trade of the colonists with 
all parts of the world, as written in the Declaration, was a policy 
first adopted in the days of Cromwell and Charles II. and per- 
sisted in to the end. But the acts of aggression particularly 
offensive were those instituted by Grenville, in 1764, when he 
revived the Molasses Act of 1733, by which an end was intended 
to be put to the rum traffic of New England, and the rigorous 
measures already referred to for enforcing obsolete trade laws. 
An idea of the full meaning of this intention may be gathered 
when we recall that, all in all, about thirty acts had been passed 
by Parliament at various times for the purpose of binding the 
colonial trade. Up to this time, however, they had been so 
loosely enforced as to cause little inconvenience. Coming down 
to a later day, we have the well known acts of 1774, which 
closed the port of Boston, and the acts of March, April, and 
December, 1775, which effectually prohibited all trade with the 
colonies, thereby cutting them off from all the world. 

We need not stop to consider the chiefest of the familiars of 
our history, the complaint of taxation without consent, but may 
turn to that which is not so well known, and which deals with 
transportation for trial beyond the seas. This meant the 
revival of an old law, passed in the reign of Henry VIII., by 
which it was made possible to send any person, accused of trea- 
son in any part of the realm, to England for trial. The first 
intimation that this act was to be extended to America came in 
1769, after the failure of Massachusetts to rescind her circular 
letter, and the riots that took place upon the seizure of John 
Hancock's sloop the " Liberty." Parliament in that year, in an 
address to the King, made the suggestion that then was a favor- 
able time for the revival of this law. Matters rested in this 
uncertain state until June, 1772, when after the revenue vessel 
" Gaspee " was burned to the water's edge at Newport, the 
determination to punish violators of the revenue acts, and these 
destructive rioters in particular, was greatly intensified. A com- 
mission was therefore instituted, in the autumn of 1772, to 



i6 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

investigate this offence. These commissioners had extensive 
powers, yet the weightiest part of their instructions was that 
which ordered them to transport the offenders to England for 
trial. 

In the autumn of 1772, just previous to the appointment 
of this commission, and before the knowledge of the " Gaspee " 
incident had even reached England, an act had been passed 
" for the better securing and preserving His Majesty's Dock 
Yards, Magazines, Ships, Ammunition and Stores." In this 
was included the detested transportation provision. It aroused 
great opposition, for it deprived the colonists of their dearly cher- 
ished right of " a constitutional trial by a jury of the vicinage." 
The law, already referred to, "for the impartial administration of 
Justice," while designed to protect the revenue and other officials 
also belongs to this category of ills, because of its transportation 
clauses. 

The possible enforcement of the Quebec Act of 1774, with 
its far-reaching provisions for extending the use of the civil as 
against the common law, was made the ground of the next griev- 
ance. As it never went into force in any respect, however, it is 
difficult to tell exactly what its effects might have been. Yet the 
extension of the limits of the province created by the proclama- 
tion of 1763, so as to include all the country west of the AUe- 
ghanies and as far south as the Ohio River, meant a further 
encroachment upon the territory of those colonies that claimed 
charter rights to much of the land thus included. The reasons 
already given, therefore, added to the opportunities for further 
aggression that the enforcement of this act might offer, rendered 
it one of the laws that was looked on with the greatest disfavor 
by the colonists. It appeared to them as one more exten- 
sion of the royal prerogative against which they had for so long 
a time been contending without avail. 

What the Quebec Act lacked in clearness, however, was 
more than supplied by the very evident intent of the bill regulat- 
ing the government of Massachusetts. If any one act of aggres- 
sion can be set down as the cause, immediate or remote, of the 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 17 

Revolution it is this. None carried with it so much consterna- 
tion and dismay. None aroused at the same time so much stern 
opposition. Its great importance, therefore, made it necessary that 
reference should be made to it in the Declaration. If the power to 
take away or alter a single charter was once recognized, the rights 
of no colony were safe from destruction. The principle, if carried 
out to its logical conclusion, meant the possible abolition of all 
the laws developed by the English in America through a period 
of a hundred and fifty years, and the substitution in their stead 
of such manner and form of government as the will of an arbi- 
trary sovereign might dictate. When, therefore, this act abol- 
ished, with one stroke, the Council as it had been developed ; 
curtailed the power of the Assembly ; practically put an end to 
that great institution for the redress of grievances, the town 
meeting ; made serious changes in the manner of selecting the 
judiciary and jurors ; and virtually made the governor the 
supreme power in the province, we cannot wonder that this act 
of revenge upon Massachusetts, which foreshadowed what might 
be expected to happen elsewhere, aroused a spirit of opposition 
throughout the colonies such as had never before been called forth. 
Herein lay the main part of the grievance. Yet the earlier decision 
(1772) to sever the Governor of Massachusetts completely 
from any dependence upon the Assembly for his salary, and 
thereby to make his freedom of action the greater, was also an 
innovation in settled custom that was viewed with naught but 
disfavor. And when the great contest was waging in North 
Carolina over the establishment of courts, the attempt of the 
Governor to pay no heed to the recalcitrant Assembly by endeav- 
oring to establish courts on his own responsibility, was likewise 
regarded as " altering fundamentally " an established form of 
government. 

Nor could the colonies ever become reconciled to that short- 
sighted policy that, because of the spirited resistance of the New 
York Assembly to the demands made upon it, could offer no 
other solution of the difficulty than the suspension of the legisla- 
ture until it bent the knee and yielded. The colonists were 



1 8 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

accustomed to the exercise of the governor's power of veto and 
prorogation. This had been submitted to from the beginning, 
and was regarded as a constitutional mode of enforcing royal 
authority. But to go so much further, and for a trivial action on 
the part of the New York Assembly, to suspend indefinitely its 
legislative functions by act of Parliament, was regarded as an exer- 
cise of unwarranted authority to which the colonists never became 
reconciled. Although forced to yield, New York's cause was 
made the cause of all, and the voice of protest against this act, 
resounding so far as the halls of the Continental Congress of 1 7 74, j| 
was to be reechoed in the immortal Declaration of 1776. It 
was, moreover, an enforcement of the Declaratory Act ot 1766, 
little heeded at first, but now seen to be fraught with the utmost 
danger to colonial rights. And the Tea Acts of 1770 and 1773 
were regarded as but other isolated instances of the policy thus 
announced. 

We have come now to the end of the political grievances. 
The last five of all, for which the King is again held solely responsi- 
ble, deal with the armed movement for suppression, begun at 
Lexington and Concord, emphasized in the proclamation or 
August, 1775, declaring the colonists in rebellion and announc- 
ing the intention to suppress the revolutionists with a high hand, 
and repeated in the speech from the throne in October of the 
same year. This meant war in earnest, and with its beginnings 
the royal governors, ever in a perplexing situation, were now 
forced to flee for their lives. First Governor Dunmore of Vir- 
ginia, soon followed by Tryon of New York, Martin of North 
Carolina, and Campbell of South Carolina, " abdicated govern- 
ment," as Jefferson euphemistically termed it, and left the inhabi- 
tants of those colonies to their own devices in creating new forms 
of government. 

The other acts complained of need but little explanation, for 
they all form part of the history of the commencement of the 
war. With the burning of Falmouth and Charlestown, Norfolk 
and Charleston, the employment of Hessians — " foreign mer- 
cenaries " — to fight the cause of England, and the act of Parlia- 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 19 

ment of December, 1775, which authorized the capture and 
condemnation of trading ships, and compelled '' our fellow 
citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear Arms against their 
country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, 
or to fall themselves by their Hands," — all are familiar. 

The last grievance refers to a possible condition of affairs, 
ever dreaded and against which precautions had been taken by 
numerous acts of legislation. Those acquainted with life in 
the South are aware of the fear engendered by the thought of 
a servile war. Nothing more horrible could be imagined ; the 
only thing to be compared with it was to let loose bands of 
well-armed Indians to plunder and devastate the country. When, 
therefore, Dunmore, in the spring of 1775, in order to enforce his 
decree, threatened to arm the negroes and Indians, the alarm he 
created was widespread, and had much to do with bringing into 
existence a well-trained militia. The governors of North and 
South Carolina were known to be adopting similar measures, 
and the latter was denounced as " having used his utmost 
endeavors to destroy the lives, liberties and properties of the 
people." Along with this came the endeavor to engage the 
Indians as allies, and Gage issued instructions to that effect in 
the summer of 1775. The Indian agent Stuart, on the borders 
of South Carolina, made overtures, and won to him the Creeks 
and Chicksaws, while Sir Guy Carleton was making similar 
progress with the Six Nations in the North. 

Jefferson's task has now come to an end. No colony has 
been overlooked. No grievances common to all are omitted 
from the terrible arraignment. All must henceforth, as Franklin 
put it, " hang together or hang separately." We cannot fail to 
recognize, in the light of the interpretation of the various clauses 
of the Declaration given above, and of the history of events up 
to July, 1776, that a master political mind penned that document, 
and a master spirit breathed vigor into its several parts. What 
goes before is a fitting prelude to, an unanswerable argument in 
behalf of, the right to declare that " We, therefore, the Repre- 
sentatives of the United States of America, in General Congress 



20 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

assembled appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the 
rectitude of our intentions, do in the Name and by Authority of 
the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare. 
That these United States are and of Right ought to be Free and 
Independent States * * * *." 



LofC. 




kD-2aa 



1 neinLernauunai i loniniy, voi. ii 

JANUARY, 1901. ^^i- H ]9t 

England at the Close of the Nineteenth Century - _ _ Efnil J 
Mountain Structure and Its Origin _____ James C 

The X-Rays in Medicine _____ Francis H. Williams^ M 

The Public Library in the United States : 

Some Recent Phases and Tendencies _ _ _ _ Herbert Pu 

The English People : Notes on National Characteristics - Bernard Bosa 

FEBRUARY, 1901. 
American Interests in the Orient _____ Charles S. C, 

Nietzsche and Darwinism _______ Alfred Fa 

Auguste Rodin : His Decorative Sculpture _ _ _ _ Camille Mai 

The Real Ibsen _________ William A 

Mountain Structure and Its Origin (Concluded) - - James G 

MARCH, 1901. j 

National Expression in American Art _____ Will H} 

The Situation of France in International Commerce - - Andre I 

The Problem of Development _____ Thomas H. Ma. 

Child- Study and Education _______ James 

Civic Reform and Social Progress - - - - - - E. R. L. ^ 

APRIL, 1901. 

The Russian People -- - - ____y, JVe^ 

West Point _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ Col. C. W. La 

A Tribute to Verdi ----_-__ Pietro Masi 

The Law of Historical Intellectual Development - J. S. Stuart-Gh 
The Science of Religion : Its History and Method - - F. B. Jt 

MAY, 1901. 
The Iron and Steel Industry : An Introspect - - H. F. J. Pi. 

German Criticism _______ Richard M. k 

M. Antoine and the Theatre Libre - - - - A. Ferdinand R 

The Science of Religion : Its History and Method F. B. Je 

The Principles of Modern Dietetics, and Their 

Importance in Therapeutics _____ Carl von Noo; 

A History of Japanese Art ______ John LaK 

Women of the Renaissance - - - - - - - B. fF. H 

The Native Vigor of Roman Art _____ FranJ^ Miles 

JUNE, 1901. 

The American Woman : A German Point of View, - - Hugo MUnsfer 

The Encroachment of the American College 

Upon the Field of the University, _____ Simeon E. Bala 

German Criticism (Concluded) _____ Richard M. M 

The Declaration of Rights of 1789, _____ Andre L 

The Principles of Modern Dietetics, and their 

Importance in Therapeutics (Concluded) _ _ _ _ Carl von Noo) 

Railway Alliance and Trade Districts of the United States, Charles H. 1 
The Literature of Expansion, _____ Charles A. Cor 

Two Works on Decorative Art, _____ Russell Stu 

Up From Slavery : Mr. Booker T. Washington's Autobiography, Harry Thurston j 

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